1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to a foot-operated cursor control input device. More particularly, the invention relates to a foot-operated cursor control input device using two independent pedals.
2. Background
A hand-operated mouse has been the most widely employed and the most often used among many other computer peripherals. With the use of the hand-held operated mouse, many computer users have realized the significance of the “travel time” it takes to move the hand and eyes among a keyboard, a monitor and a mouse. Also, many users of the hand-held operated mouse suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome associated with stress on the delicate hand-wrist area and desktop mice.
A few attempts have been made to address the aforementioned problems by providing a foot-operated mouse. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,886,685 issued to Best on Mar. 23, 1999 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,745,055 issued to Redlich et al on Apr. 28, 1998 disclose foot-operated mice, and each are direct duplication of the desktop hand-held operated mouse with adapters and minor modifications. In these designs, the user's foot and toe are expected to duplicate the motion of the fingers for mouse movements and mouse button clicks. Another type of foot-operated mice incorporates belly-up mouse designs. In these designs, a conventional mouse is turned upside down and mounted to a sturdy footrest. The sole of the feet is used as a substitute for a mouse pad. One foot controls the cursor movement, while the other foot or toe controls the mouse buttons. However, all of these designs require that the human feet and toes exercise the same dexterity and fine motion as the user's hands and fingers. Accordingly, these foot-operated mice render them unwieldy and less attractive for everyday use.
Improvements of these designs have been suggested to reduce the awkwardness and discomfort in the use of foot-operated mice by introducing rail systems and sockets. U.S. Pat. No. 5,552,807 issued to Hayes et al on Sep. 3, 1996 discloses a foot-operated mouse. U.S. Pat. No. 5,838,305 issued to Bookstein on Nov. 17, 1998 discloses a computer game input control device for emulating the throttle and brakes in cars and planes. Both of these input control devices employ a sliding system set on rails that facilitates the use of both feet to provide x-y movement of a cursor in the Cartisian coordinate. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,841,426 issued to Dodson et al on Nov. 24, 1998 uses a socket pivot motion to provide the same motion as the desktop mouse. However, even these improvements are based on the premises that the foot-operated mice must mimic the motion of the desktop hand-operated mouse. Thus, these foot-operated mice have been designed with a lot of design limitations. For example, all of the aforementioned foot-operated mice or input control devices require 360-degree circular movement of the lower limb joints (e.g. toes, ankles, knees and hips) which may causes extreme fatigue on the limbs and lower back.